Friday 22 August 2014 11.00 EDT
First published on Friday 22 August 2014 11.00 EDT

Sort Of Books have been steadily working their way through Tove Jansson's back catalogue of adult novels and stories and now the turn has come of this, her first collection of short stories, translated by Thomas Teal.

They were originally published in 1971, 26 years after Jansson brought out her first book about the Moomins; her writing career spanned almost 50 years. These 18 stories are very different in style from those beloved children's books: fragmentary, starting and stopping in the middle of things, concerned more with situations than plots, and never going for clever twists or the flourish of a neat ending. If there is a common theme among these odd, rather disturbing pieces, it is that of individuals who are closed down to varying degrees and then cautiously open up to someone before withdrawing again. In several of the stories characters toil at close, painstaking handiwork: an embroiderer, a signwriter and, fascinatingly, the illustrator Edward Gorey – ciphers for artist Jansson herself? The Gorey character says, "It's the unexpressed that interests me … it's a mistake to clarify everything," and that could well stand for Jansson's writing here, too.

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